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Before his coronation as King James, the future NBA star was a member of an elite band of basketball phenoms known as the Fab Four. “More Than a Game” shows how James, Sian Cotton, Dru Joyce III and Willie McGhee became a team at a Salvation Army gymnasium in Akron.

It all started “in a little gym with a linoleum floor on Maple Street,” Joyce’s father, Dru Joyce II, says in the film. He also became a coach, mentor and father figure to the Fab Four.

An early test of their mettle was in middle school, when the four, who had narrowly missed bringing home an Amateur Athletic Union National Championship, decided to stick together for their high school years. The Fab Four expanded to five when Romeo Travis joined them at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron.

“The team was like a family; you play your heart out for your family,” McGhee says in “More Than a Game.”

Directed by Kristopher Belman, “More Than a Game” shows how each young man leaned on the others during personal challenges, ups and downs in basketball, their rise to national celebrity and the pressures of media scrutiny.

“It wasn’t about basketball,” Dru Joyce II says in the film. “I needed to help them to become men … they are indebted to something that is greater than themselves.”